Making and Unmaking the Carolingians

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians PDF

Author: Stuart Airlie

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-12-24

Total Pages: 789

ISBN-13: 1786726408

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How does power manifest itself in individuals? Why do people obey authority? And how does a family, if they are the source of such dominance, convey their superiority and maintain their command in a pre-modern world lacking speedy communications, standing armies and formalised political jurisdiction? Here, Stuart Airlie expertly uses this idea of authority as a lens through which to explore one of the most famous dynasties in medieval Europe: the Carolingians. Ruling the Frankish realm from 751 to 888, the family of Charlemagne had to be ruthless in asserting their status and adept at creating a discourse of Carolingian legitimacy in order to sustain their supremacy. Through its nuanced analysis of authority, politics and family, Making and Unmaking the Carolingians, 751-888 outlines the system which placed the Carolingian dynasty at the centre of the Frankish world. In doing so, Airlie sheds important new light on both the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire and the nature of power in medieval Europe more generally.

The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom

The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom PDF

Author: Charles West

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1487545185

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The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom investigates how the first royal divorce scandal led to the collapse of a kingdom, changing the fate of medieval Europe. Through a set of annotated translations of key contemporary sources, the book presents the downfall of the Frankish kingdom of Lotharingia as a case study in early medieval politics, equipping readers to develop their own independent interpretations. The book tracks the twists and turns of the scandal as it unfolded over a crucial decade and a half in the ninth century. Drawing on primary sources such as letters, material culture, and secret treaties, The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom offers readers a sharply defined window into one of the most dramatic episodes in Carolingian history, rich with insights on the workings of early medieval society.

Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy

Between Ostrogothic and Carolingian Italy PDF

Author: Fabrizio Oppedisano

Publisher: Firenze University Press

Published: 2023-10-03

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 8855186639

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The victory of Justinian, achieved after a lacerating war, put an end to the ambitious project conceived and implemented by Theoderic after his arrival in Italy: that of a new society in which peoples divided by centuries-old cultural barriers would live together in peace and justice, without renouncing their own traditions but respecting shared principles inspired by the values of civilitas. What did this great experiment leave to Europe and Italy in the centuries to come? What were the survivals and the ruptures, what were the revivals of that world in early medieval society? How did that past continue to be recounted and how did it interact with the present, especially in the decisive moment of the Frankish conquest of Italy? This book aims to confront these questions, and it does so by exploring different themes, concerning politics and ideology, culture and literary tradition, law, epigraphy and archaeology.

The Carolingians and the Written Word

The Carolingians and the Written Word PDF

Author: Rosamond McKitterick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1989-06-29

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780521315654

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Functional analysis of the written word in eight and ninth century Carolingian European society demonstrates that literacy was not confined to a clerical elite, but dispersed in lay society and used administratively as well.

The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire

The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire PDF

Author: Paul Edward Dutton

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780803216532

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Between the reigns of Charlemagne and Charles the Fat, Europe underwent a series of alarming and unsettling changes. Civil war broke out, royal authority was divided, and the brightest of men and women began to entertain nightmarish thoughts of the corruption and collapse of their world. Amidst the ruin of their shaken and shattered assumptions, Carolingian intellectuals wrote down a series of dream texts. The Carolingian oneiric record, though dark with confusion and immoderate emotion, supplies us with a more subjective reading of this formative period of European history than the one found in standard histories. Carolingian dream-authors criticized and complained because they hoped to reform a royal society that had lost its way. This study begins by surveying the sleep of kings and the status of royal dreams from the classical period to the ninth century. Then it runs to an examination of individual dreams and the political disruption that informs them. The reader will encounter a variety of surprising dreams: of Charlemagne's lust, demons and archangels, a sorrowful prophet, disputed property and bullying saints, magical swords and mad princes, and Charles the Fat's journey through an awesome otherworld towards an uncertain constitutional future.

The Carolingians

The Carolingians PDF

Author: Pierre Riché

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780812213423

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Translated from the 1983 French edition, traces the rise, fall, and revival of the Carolingian dynasty, and shows how it molded the shape of a post-Roman Europe that is still with us today. An introduction to the subject for undergraduate or general readers. The largely French and German bibliography has been replaced with a short list of recommended English works. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Rethinking the Carolingian reforms

Rethinking the Carolingian reforms PDF

Author: Arthur Westwell

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1526149540

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The Carolingian period (c. 750-900) has traditionally been described as one of ‘reform’ or ‘renaissance’, where cultural and intellectual changes were imposed from above in a programme of correctio. This view leans heavily on prescriptive texts issued by kings and their entourages, foregrounding royal initiative and the cultural products of a small intellectual elite. However, attention to understudied texts and manuscripts of the period reveals a vibrant striving for moral improvement and positive change at all levels of society. This expressed itself in a variety of ways for different individuals and communities, whose personal relationships could be just as influential as top-down prescription. The often anonymous creators and copyists in a huge range of centres emerge as active participants in shaping and re-shaping the ideals of their world. A much more dynamic picture of Carolingian culture emerges when we widen our perspective to include sources from beyond royal circles and intellectual elites. This book reveals that the Carolingian age did not witness a coherent programme of reform, nor one distinct to this period and dependent exclusively on the strength of royal power. Rather, it formed a particularly intense, well-funded and creative chapter in the much longer history of moral improvement for the sake of collective salvation.

The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians 751-987

The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians 751-987 PDF

Author: Rosamond Mckitterick

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1317872487

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An exciting examination of the entire history of the Carolingian 'dynasty' in western Europe. The author shows the whole period to be one of immense political, religious. cultural and intellectual dynamism; not only did it lay the foundations of the governmental and administrative institutions of Europe and the organisation of the Church, but it also securely established the intellectual and cultural traditions which were to dominate western Christendom for centuries to come.